To form a color photographic image on a silver halide color photographic material, widely employed is a method of exposing a photographic material having three photographic, yellow, magenta and cyan couplers contained in its light-sensitive emulsion layers and processing the thus-exposed material for color development. It is desired that the color dyes to be formed in this way are vivid yellow, magenta and cyan dyes all having a little side absorption, thus giving color photographic images of high color reproducibility. On the other hand, it is also desired that the color photographic images formed have high stability when stored under various conditions. In particular, color photographic images to be exhibited for viewing in light are often faded to have a lowered color image density or are often stained in yellow in the white background areas, in a relatively short period of several months or so. Therefore, the improvement in them is desired.
As one means for improving the light fastness of silver halide color photographic materials, known is addition of ultraviolet absorbents to the materials.
To add an ultraviolet absorbent to a photographic material, there are known a method of emulsifying and dispersing it in a high boiling point organic solvent, such as phthalates, phosphates, and adding the resulting dispersion to a photographic material, such as that described in JP-A 58-209735 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"); and a method of infiltrating it into a polymer latex and adding the resulting latex to a photographic material, such as that described in British Patent 2,016,017A. However, these methods had various drawbacks in that the light fastness of the ultraviolet absorbent itself is worsened and a large amount of a polymer latex is needed.
On the other hand, a method of emulsifying and dispersing an ultraviolet absorbent along with a particular hydrophobic polymer and adding the resulting dispersion to a photographic material, by which the light fastness of the ultraviolet absorbent itself and also the color image formed is improved, has been disclosed in JP-A 63-264748 and 4-19185. According to this method, however, it was necessary to use a large amount of an auxiliary solvent so as to dissolve both the ultraviolet absorbent and the hydrophobic polymer. If a large amount of such an auxiliary solvent used remains in the emulsified dispersion, it often causes a problem in that the coated layer is uneven. If, on the other hand, the amount of the auxiliary solvent to be used for dissolving the polymer is reduced, the viscosity of the resulting solution will increase so that the solution is hardly emulsified and dispersed, or, as the case may be, the dispersibility of the emulsified dispersion will be poor so that the dispersion contains coarse grains or it often gives precipitates when stored.
Apart from the above, various attempts have been made so as to prevent photographic images from having yellow stains in their white background areas when exposed to light, by adding various stain inhibitors to photographic materials. For instance, JP-B 51-1420 (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an "examined Japanese patent publication") and 52-6623, JP-A 58-114036 and 59-5246 mention that phenols, amides, piperidines and hydrazines are effective in preventing stains when used along with couplers. It was sure that the proposed technique was effective in noticeably preventing stains to be derived from couplers. However, the technique was not satisfactory since it was ineffective in preventing stains to be derived from non-light-sensitive layers. Therefore, the improvement in the technique has been desired.